me to
take their money afterwards, indeed it did. And there I found out about
Monsieur Peringuey. He was a proper rogue too! None of 'em had a good
word for him except the Marquise that kept the French boarding-house on
Fourth Street. I made out that his real name was the Count Talleyrand de
Perigord--a priest right enough, but sorely come down in the world. He'd
been King Louis' Ambassador to England a year or two back, before the
French had cut off King Louis' head; and, by what I heard, that head
wasn't hardly more than hanging loose before he'd run back to Paris and
prevailed on Danton, the very man which did the murder, to send him back
to England again as Ambassador of the French Republic! That was too much
for the English, so they kicked him out by Act of Parliament, and he'd
fled to the Americas without money or friends or prospects. I'm telling
you the talk in the washhouse. Some of 'em was laughing over it. Says
the French Marquise, "My friends, you laugh too soon. That man 'll be on
the winning side before any of us."

'"I did not know you were so fond of priests, Marquise," says the
Vicomte. His lady did my washing, as I've told you.

'"I have my reasons," says the Marquise. "He sent my uncle and my two
brothers to Heaven by the little door,"--that was one of the emigre
names for the guillotine. "He will be on the winning side if it costs
him the blood of every friend he has in the world."

'"Then what does he want here?" says one of 'em. "We have all lost our
game."

'"My faith!" says the Marquise. "He will find out, if any one can,
whether this canaille of a Washington means to help us to fight England.
Genet" (that was my Ambassador in the Embuscade) "has failed and gone
off disgraced; Faucher" (he was the new man) "hasn't done any better,
but our Abbe will find out, and he will make his profit out of the news.
Such a man does not fall."

'"He begins unluckily," says the Vicomte. "He was set upon today in the
street for not hooting your Washington." They all laughed again, and one
remarks, "How does the poor devil keep himself?"

'He must have slipped in through the washhouse door, for he flits past
me and joins 'em, cold as ice.

'"One does what one can," he says. "I sell buttons. And you, Marquise?"

'"I?"--she waves her poor white hands all burned--"I am a cook--a very
bad one--at your service, Abbe. We were just talking about you."

They didn't treat him like they talked of him. They backed